


A Symptom of Affection and Silence

by Betty



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Creepy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:24:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Betty/pseuds/Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There are people without whom this would not have been written. None of them should be blamed for it. I owe <a href="http://glossing.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://glossing.livejournal.com/"><b>glossing</b></a> a great deal for her delicate beta.</p><p><strong>Warning:</strong>  It should be noted what while this story is not, technically, a great number of things, it deals with power imbalances, exploitive relationships, and themes of consent.  It's creepy and heartwarming!</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Symptom of Affection and Silence

**Author's Note:**

> There are people without whom this would not have been written. None of them should be blamed for it. I owe [](http://glossing.livejournal.com/profile)[**glossing**](http://glossing.livejournal.com/) a great deal for her delicate beta.
> 
> **Warning:** It should be noted what while this story is not, technically, a great number of things, it deals with power imbalances, exploitive relationships, and themes of consent. It's creepy and heartwarming!

Tim realizes it for the first time when he comes to cut Batman down with his micro-torch, after Robin's dealt with the Riddler and his hostages. Batman kneels to bring his handcuffs far enough down on the pipe that Tim can cut it without hanging upside-down from the ceiling. For a moment, just a second, Batman _looks_ at him. Tim doesn't have enough time to keep the awareness from his face before Batman looks to one side, saving them both from having to acknowledging it.

With that moment, a hundred things fall in place; the way Bruce leans back in his chair in front of the computer, cowl back, after a long night, the way he holds his gauntlets in front of the case, the way he uses his height to tower over Tim.

It's there, looming because of Bruce's refusal to speak of it, leaving it in Tim's hands.

It's not critical, so he lets it sit, returns to it between mission-critical problems, works at it while doing homework. After a week he knows the heft of it, the sick undigested silence of it by memory; he needs to gather new data if he wants...

Well.

Eventually he catches Bruce at a disadvantage, on his back beneath cave's back-up generator, investigating a drip.

"Rag," says Bruce, reaching blindly out from beneath it, and Tim snaps the cuff around his left wrist.

"Bruce," he says, because he has no desire to be concussed bouncing off the cave floor. Bruce jerks his wrist and then says nothing. Tim stands on the chain of the cuff.

"Tell me what you want," he says, and thinks his voice is steady.

Bruce's voice resonates: he sounds amused. "Is that an offer?" Tim's glad he can't see Bruce's face.

Tim swallows. Licks some moisture back into his mouth. "Not if you can't be specific," he manages.

"Really, Tim, I thought I trained you to observe."

Tim steps off the handcuff, hands Bruce the rag. He needs to remember that Bruce wins because he makes the rules.

Bruce doesn't say anything about it. Tim observes. He watches Bruce from under his lashes as they train, on patrol. He goes back through his archives, makes a chart of Bruce's romantic links, tracks them as they daisy chain across the society page. When Robin's trapped by the Hatter in leg irons, he burns through the link and not the cuff so he can wear it back to the cave. Batman doesn't seem to respond to it.

When he helps Batman into the harness of the batglider, Batman's breath catches. Tim knows Bruce let it happen. The impulse to scream at Bruce is childish, so he doesn't indulge it.

If he wants Bruce to know that he knows, he has to do it. He refuses to let that goad him. If he does it at all, he has to do it perfectly.

 

He practises his expression in the mirror. He tells himself he's merely keeping the option available.

He doesn't have to do this, except that Bruce gave it to him as a challenge and a test, and Robin can't back down from either.

When they come home from patrol early one night with barely a bruise between them, he feels the chasm stretching in front of him, the gap made by the opportunity, like the opening in a fight. You don't think, you take the opening.

When Bruce gets out of the Batmobile Tim feels himself falling into that chasm. He counts his breaths as he walks over to the bolt in the floor where the server once was. "Bruce, come here."

Bruce turns, agonizingly slowly, like a suicide tumbling off a ledge. The cowl allows little expression, but the corner of Bruce's mouth suggests enquiry.

Tim forces the smile he knows Bruce will respond to, Robin's, and Bruce strides toward him, eyes locked.

There's the last moment of plausible deniability and then Tim says, "Kneel." His heartbeat recedes and sound returns. Now, there's only the acceleration of freefall. Tim waits.

If Bruce refuses... he doesn't know if that means he's won or lost, but it means they're not doing this, that he has an out. Instead, Bruce smiles at him like he's a suspect.

"Why?"

Like a fight, every shift of his weight has to be instinct, not calculation. Tim stops himself from thinking, too late for thought and says, "because you want to."

Right answer. Bruce shifts back, crouches down, goes to his knees. He watches Tim the entire time; his eyes are hungry. Tim watches back. This too is observation.

Kneeling, waiting, Bruce's presence seems magnified. Tim turns his back on him and walks behind Bruce to his locker. Either Bruce knows what Tim's had hidden there for the last two days, or he doesn't. Tim has to concentrate to keep his breathing even.

Bruce doesn't turn his head as Tim approaches him from behind.

"Wrists," he says, grateful when his voice doesn't wobble. He's not sure how Bruce manages, but there's something insolent in the way Bruce puts his wrists behind his back without hesitation. His cape is trapped between his arms like a pair of folded wings.

The curve of Bruce's neck remains inflexible as Tim fastens Bruce's wrists. The material bunched around the handcuff chain brushes Bruce's gauntlet, and Tim sees him flex his wrist. Bruce didn't know, then.

Tim fastens the length of chain already attached to the cuffs to the bolt in the floor. The moment he screws together the link, Bruce heaves his shoulder, testing it. He stands halfway up, gets a foot underneath him, and is brought down again by the chain. He settles back to his knees easily, but something there feels like a reprimand, so Tim gets another set of cuffs and attaches them over Bruce's boots, around the chain fastened to the floor, making a slip-knot of Bruce's body.

Standing behind Bruce's back is safer, and therefore cowardice, so he circles around to the front. Bruce looks comfortable, like he could wait all night, kneeling on the stone floor. Only a handful of people would be able to identify the expression on his face as a faint smile. Now isn't the time to think of any of those people.

Tim realizes he's pulling the cape around himself as a shield from Bruce's gaze. Tim could continue like this, but it would be dishonest, and therefore pointless. Tim returns to his locker for his civilian clothing.

He changes in full view of Bruce, but out of arms length. He tries to do it like any night, remove each piece of armour, inspect it for damage, put it aside, move to the next. Somehow, it feels like un-becoming, like regressing, becoming blank. He leaves Robin's mask on. Nearly naked, instead of featureless he feels undifferentiated, dangerous with potential.

The silence is wrong, so he breaks it as he dresses himself in Tim Drake's clothing. "After I saw Dick's parents die, my parents told me not to worry about Dick because he was your son now. I thought that was his happy ending, for a while." Tim's too far away to be certain, but he thinks he sees Bruce react to that. Tim pulls the cardigan on over his shirt and takes the step back to Bruce.

"When I discovered you hadn't actually adopted him... it seemed less perfect. I was disappointed." Tim reaches out, and tugs the cowl back. Bruce's hair is sweaty and plastered back, where it isn't sticking up in odd twists. Bruce blinks once, vulnerable and then smiles up at Tim, politely expectant.

"I had an image of you as Dick's father, keeping him safe, making sure nothing hurt him, ever again," says Tim, and unfastens the cowl at the throat, and then carefully pulls it off Bruce, along with the cape. Bruce shifts minutely to facilitate it, all helpfulness.

"Ward... I couldn't picture that. It didn't mean anything to me."

Bruce only has to tilt his head back slightly to look Tim in the face. He raises an eyebrow politely.

Tim's grateful for his mask. He waits to swallow until he's turned to get the shears and his throat is no longer in profile. "When I put it all together, realized you were Batman...." Tim tucks the tips of his fingers under the high neck of Bruce's shirt. He can feel Bruce's pulse, slightly elevated above a resting rate. "I was aware of your reputation, of course, but I believed..."

Tim slips one blade of the shears between the shirt and Bruce's neck and begins cutting. There are lines where the armour can be cut through, if you know where, a safety feature.

"Dick had to be the luckiest boy in the world. I imagined that you had to be grim for everyone else, as Batman, but Dick would get to see you happy. That you could only be his father in secret, but I thought that would be _more_ than enough." Tim puts one hand flat against Bruce's heart, half on, and half off the bat, as he cuts across to Bruce's shoulder, and along the right arm. He can feel the moment when Bruce starts to use biofeedback methods to calm his pulse.

"Part of it, part of following you around," says Tim, and opens up the sleeve entirely. Tim changes the hand on Bruce's heart and starts cutting out from the centre in the other direction. He's only nearly ambidextrous, no reason to turn down a chance to practise. "I kept on looking for the moment when you'd slip up, and accidentally be a father to him when you shouldn't." He's leaning over Bruce's back now, to cut open the sleeve at the wrist where it's chained. His mouth is by Bruce's ear.

"I saw it Bruce. You were proud of him, I could tell." Under his hand, Bruce shudders.

Tim draws back. Bruce's shirt is still curled around him, stiff with armour, like a corpse with a Y-incision, still in one piece around the torso although the shoulders and arms are only hanging on because they haven't been dislodged.

"He never saw that, though. I realized that later." Tim smooths a hand down Bruce's side. He rarely touches the suit without gauntlets on: it feels rough against his fingertips, leaves them faintly buzzing. He looks at his fingertips and then back at Bruce.

Bruce's head is tipped back, exposing his throat. It's denial and a bid at distraction, so Tim doesn't let himself look, and instead begins to cut through the side of the shirt. "At the time, though," Tim tells Bruce, "I was... I was angry at him for running. He had so much, he had--"

Bruce grunts.

"Sorry," says Tim, and changes the angle of the scissors. "I'd seen you throw yourself off a ten story building and catch a telephone wire on the way down, it didn't seem possible that you could be bad at anything." Bruce lets his eyes fall closed for a second, accepting the implicit criticism with relief. Under Tim's hand, he can feel Bruce takes his first deep breath since they began, and the left side of the shirt parts stiffly as Tim finishes the cut. Tim could pull it off like that, but instead he leans over and starts on the other side.

"You adopted Jason though, and that meant something. Dick knew that, I knew it, I think Jason knew too. I didn't have to watch; it was obvious you loved him, and he knew it." It's odd saying a word like 'love' to Bruce, but it comes out around the lump in Tim's throat. The harsh sound of the reinforced fabric parting sounds like something irreparable being torn. The shirt parts, and Tim takes hold of the front part and pulls it off of Bruce.

"The first time I spoke to you--"

"I remember," says Bruce, his voice harsh, raw, nothing of Batman in it, and Tim feels every muscle in his body instantly go taut with the reflex to flee. He forces a breath out, in, puts down the half-armour and goes behind Bruce to pull the rest of the carapace off of him.

"I guess it was obvious I was scared, but I never thought of being scared of you. I was scared--" Tim carefully pulls the stiff armour away from the curves of the human under it, makes himself say it. "I was scared you wouldn't _like_ me." His tongue feels thick, admitting it.

Behind Bruce, Tim straightens out the inside-out shirt he's threaded through the cuffs, and begins to invert it up Bruce's arms. "Duck your head," he tells Bruce, and Bruce does, confused. Tim can feel Bruce realize it's one of his shirts, threaded through a knit vest, as Tim brings Bruce's head through the open neck.

"Tim--" says Bruce, an objection, but Bruce is wearing his gauntlets still with their lockpicks in them, so Tim doesn't see any need to pay any particular attention to it.

"I trusted you," says Tim, carefully neatening Bruce's collar. "You'd have to be a _good_ man to give up your life to something like that, a fundamentally _decent_ person."

"Tim--" says Bruce again, and he's pulling against the cuffs. Tim's not sure if he's even aware.

"I couldn't imagine-- I-- I was actually jealous of Dick, you know, because he had-- He-- I wanted what he had, your regard, your affection."

Tim takes a step back. The effect is strong, if one ignores the details: the unfastened cuffs, uncombed hair, the fact that he's kneeling in the batcave. Tim peels at the edge of his own mask, still on.

"*Don't*" says Bruce, and this time it's not a command. Tim ignores it.

"Bruce-- I trusted you. I-- I couldn't admit it to myself, but I w- I wished you were my father." Bruce makes an involuntary sound.

Without the lenses in his mask, it's darker, and Tim blinks. He meets Bruce's eyes. "Of course, now I know you're an emotionally manipulative asshole," says Tim, and feels himself smile, tenderly. He's falling, without a net, but it feels good to be able to say this to Bruce, even if only this once.

Bruce's mouth is a tight line of distress. Tim puts a hand at Bruce's jaw, and lets his thumb touch the sweaty edge of Bruce's hair, in front of his ear. "It's okay, Bruce," Tim says. "I know you. I watched you, I _saw_ you." His left hand comes up to mirror the position of his right.

"I trust you," he tells Bruce. "I--"

"No!" says Bruce, trying to rear back, but Tim pulls him back by his ears. "Tim, _no_, don't--"

"I know you won't hurt me," says Tim. He can feel his own pulse pound in his head, and Bruce's under his fingertips. "I know you're doing the best you can."

Bruce is trembling under Tim's hands, and Tim reflexively tightens his grip, trying to steady him, looks him in the face.

"Bruce, I know you're a good man. I have faith in you."

Bruce looks terrified, betrayed. He's forgotten the lockpicks and is straining against the chains. In this position, Tim can easily use his own weight to hold Bruce down.

"Shhhhh," Tim finds himself telling Bruce, "shhhh." He hunches over, and wraps arms around Bruce as best he can. "It'll be okay." Bruce's face is crushed to Tim's chest. Tim strokes Bruce's hair, which smells of plastic, until Bruce stops trembling.


End file.
